In 60 Seconds You Will Realize that Time is Real

By "time is real" I mean to say that everything we experience and know about is caught in time, is caught in a moment, is not an illusion. It’s the deepest clue we have, perhaps, to the nature of reality.

This is to counterpose the picture which was developed in physics from Galileo and Newton and Descartes down to the present quantum cosmologists: that time is an illusion, time is an auxiliary; that reality is behind this veil of illusion, is timeless, is permanent, is outside of time. As Einstein and many other people have said, our experience of the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion and reality is just the whole history of the world at once.

Even the optimists among us would have to admit 2018 was a challenging year. The fractured world that became the focus of our 2018 Annual Meeting a year ago came under further pressure from populist rhetoric and rising nationalist agendas. At the same time, the urgent need for coordinated global action in areas such as climate change, inequality and the impact of automation on jobs became more intense.

The big day has come: You are taking your road test to get your driver's license. As you start your mom's car with a stern-faced evaluator in the passenger seat, you know you'll need to be alert but not so excited that you make mistakes. Even if you are simultaneously sleep-deprived and full of nervous energy, you need your brain to moderate your level of arousal so that you do your best.

Blackstone's Byron Wien, Vice Chairman of Private Wealth Solutions Group, gave a speech laying out the wisdom he learned during his 80 years. Here are 15 of Wien's best life lessons, which teach us about improving our productivity, sleep, burnout avoidance, and everything in between.